The Case of Bell vs. Buck
In 1913, the Superintendent of the facility, Albert Priddy, stated that the facility would never use sterilization as a general procedure, even though many other institutions like the Virginia State Colony were sterilizing patients. Priddy felt the process was not practical. However, a little over a decade later, the institution would become one of the leading facilities of the “Eugenics” movement. By 1927, the facility was taking part in a program which promoted involuntary sterilization, appendectomies, and other procedures. It was also the year that the facility, which was then known as The Lynchburg State Colony, decided to test Virginia’s 1924 sterilization act.
The 1924 sterilization act stated that people could only be sterilized for two reasons. The first reason was to protect the welfare of society and the second reason was to promote the person’s health. When the Virginia State Colony decided to test how constitutional this act was, they selected a patient named Carrie Buck, who had been brought to the facility in her teens. Throughout the beginning of 1927, the courts debated on whether Carrie should be sterilized or not. The case, which became called Bell vs. Buck, was sent to the United States Supreme Court for a decision. In a vote of 8:1, the United States Supreme Court decided to uphold Carrie’s pending sterilization.
The Truth of Involuntary Sterilization
Once the facility realized that the United States Supreme Court would uphold involuntary sterilization, the doctors took it upon themselves to sterilize thousands of patients. One of the biggest reasons they used to defend the involuntary sterilization was because doing so would keep the feebleminded from reproducing. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, during the Bell vs. Buck case wrote that mental illness is transferred from mother to child. During the Bell vs. Buck case, many believed this was proven when a social worker examined Carrie’s young child, Vivian, and stated that Vivian did not look quite healthy.
The ruling of Virginia’s sterilization procedures was not repealed until 1974. However, this time, more than 7,000 people had been sterilized because of the legitimacy of the Bell vs. Buck hearing. While Carrie was sterilized, she was later released from the facility and became a domestic worker for a family in Virginia. In 1980, Carrie was interviewed by reporters. Through the interview, the reporters found out that Carrie had average intelligence and was sent to the facility as a teenager because she had become pregnant by her foster parents’ nephew who had raped her.
Not only was Carrie interviewed in 1980, but this was also the year that people found out how many patients Virginia’s Lynchburg State Colony involuntarily sterilized. This discovery occurred when the Executive Director of the hospital found old records dating back to the 1920s. The Executive Director noted in the documents that close to 4,000 patients had been sterilized between the early 1920s and 1972.